


Close

by vylit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, brief mention of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-01
Updated: 2006-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:19:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vylit/pseuds/vylit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max becomes a fun house mirror that Sam can tilt.  From certain directions, it stops looking like Max and starts looking like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close

Max.

Sam sees his name scrawled along the walls, written in the streets, broken and twisted and fractured. He sees knives and falling glass and belts against young, pink skin. He wakes up with memories that aren't his. Max becomes a fun house mirror that Sam can tilt; from certain directions, it stops looking like Max and starts looking like him.

* * *

"You're not him," Dean says, voice sure and strong, his words dropping hard in an imitation of their Dad. "You wouldn't have become him, Sam."

But Sam remembers the asylum and the gun and the anger, and he thinks that maybe, in a different life, there's a Sam without a Dean--a Sam that can kill.

* * *

They're in Wisconsin, cold and shivering their asses off outside a Denny's, when Dean asks, "Do you want to see someone? We--Dad and me, we met this guy in New Mexico. He might know something about it."

The streets are quiet, dim light illuminating the sidewalk they're standing on like a spotlight. Dean looks uncomfortable, trying to hide it by staring in at Mike—the waiter whose ex-lover hexed him before driving into a tree—looking focused like he gets when they're close to figuring out a case, but Sam knows him, can read the line of Dean's shoulders as easily as he used to read court documents.

"Psychic?"

"Empathic. He's," Dean pauses, shifting, "all right."

Sam stares inside the Denny's and watches Mike slouch against one of the counters, staring at a group of laughing teenage girls in the corner. Mike who will finish his shift and go back to his apartment with his new girlfriend, who will live because they'll protect him. "Are you saying I need to see someone?"

Dean freezes for a moment and then loosens, shaking his head and pressing a hand against Sam's shoulder blade, weighty even through Sam's jacket. "Let's go wait in the car, dumbass."

* * *

On Sam's birthday Dean hustles enough money to take Sam out for Indian, and despite the fact that Dean hates Indian food, he picks around his plate and doesn't complain, relaxing enough to flirt with the waitress, bringing out his lopsided smile that makes her come back again and again, her dark hands filled with nervous motion.

Afterwards, Dean takes them to a bar, where Dean drinks enough to leave his voice thick, though his steps are steady, and even though he's usually a better dart player than Sam, Sam beats him three games in a row, and all Dean does is laugh and grab another beer.

"Lucky game, Sammy."

It's not until Sam's lying down, the sheets rough against his legs and Dean's breathing loud and steady in the next bed, that Sam remembers his twelfth birthday and his dad taking them to the lake because Sam liked to swim and Dean liked to fish. 

There's a picture of them that their dad used to carry around in his wallet: Sam with his hair still wet, bangs hanging in his eyes, and Dean holding up the fish he caught with one hand, the other arm around Sam, smiling wide because it was the largest one they brought back that day.

Dean never knew that Sam had watched their dad catch a larger one and release it, raising his eyebrow at Sam and making a _ssh_ motion. And when Dean had asked why their dad had let it go, he'd answered, "It was small."

Max has memories of fishing trips, but they're punctuated with drunken slaps that only ended there because his father was too drunk to follow Max when he ran away, and Sam doesn't know how he knows that, but he can see the back of Max's father's hand and feel the sting across his face as clearly as the warmth of Dean's arm around his shoulders.

* * *

It doesn't happen all at once. It's slow; voices and thoughts and possibilities press against one another, showing him flashes that skitter and twitch and grow stronger.

Sam knows that someone in the diner they're sitting in is planning a weekend away with his mistress and that someone else is praying over their food-- _Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive_.

"Where do we go next?" Dean asks, his voice low and casual.

They put away the newspapers weeks ago, and Dean didn't say anything then and doesn't say anything now. He doesn't mention a lot these days, at least not when it's bright outside. At night, Sam drowns in blood and ash and fire and death, bone white skies and black earth, and Sam wakes up more often than not with a scream clutching the back of his throat and the taste of iron and sulfur on his tongue, and that's when Dean's there, hard and constant, his voice quiet when he asks, "What was it this time?"

Sometimes Sam even answers. Halting and angry, because he didn't want this, he didn't ask for this, but Dean hardly reacts at all. Some part of him—an arm, hand, thigh—touches Sam while he listens, remembering the details that Sam will try to forget come morning. 

Last night was not one of those nights.

"Guthrie, Oklahoma," Sam says, staring off into the distance, the bodies of children in too small shoes surrounding him like dying flowers.

* * *

Guthrie is laden with spirits. They live in the town's theater, as whispers in the air creeping up Sam's spine. They surround him, stronger here than in most places, and he doesn't sleep the first night. On the second, he stares at the ceiling and thinks of the boys in the boarding house, of their gaunt faces and their thin, bruised bodies. They were there because no one wanted them, because no one would notice if they were hurt, because no one wanted to see.

Sam's dad inspected every bruise. Dean bandaged every wound. And he could map their bodies as well as his own, could trace the lines of their scars, could tell the story behind each one. 

"Go to sleep, Sam."

Dean's eyes shine in the dark, and Sam turns his back to him, hoping Dean won't ask.

"You could see them, couldn't you?" Dean moves over the words slow and careful. He sounds worried; he sounds tired.

One of the boys liked Dean, had followed him from room to room, watching how Dean stood and moved and tilted his head, and the boy had mimicked him, looking up at Sam and grinning when he got it right and his movements synced with Dean's. He'd had a gap in his front teeth, like he'd just lost one, and dark circles under his eyes, and he'd still looked like a child, still looked *alive*.

Max is whispering something to Sam, but he focuses on the dim light coming from under the curtain and doesn't listen. "They were just ghosts, Dean."

* * *

_Your life should have been mine. Why me and not you, Sam? Why me and not you?_

Max's voice is with him all the time now. It's familiar, his memories as vivid as Sam's own, and the first time Sam reaches out for Dean it's to remind himself that he's still Sam, that he still has something that's his own. Dean pushes him away. "No, Sam. No."

But it's imprinted them, it's changed everything, and when Sam has his next nightmare and he's shaking and covered with sweat and the windows rattle and the door creaks, Dean doesn't push him away, but folds him in. Sam's mouth and Dean's mouth, and Sam feels a kind of sick comfort in how right it feels to push against Dean, to feel their skin move against one another, scar to scar.

"It'll be all right, Sammy. You'll be OK."

* * *

The next morning is gray and bleak, clouds low in the sky, and Dean wakes him up with a hard push in the side. "Come on. We're leaving."

"What happened?" Sam blinks away sleep, his body relaxed in a way it hasn't been since Saginaw, and it takes a moment for him to remember what's different.

"We got a text from dad." Dean pushes the last of his clothes into his bag, his hands jerking when he gives Sam the phone.

It's one text, three words: _I'm getting close._

"So am I," Sam says, his voice loud in the quiet room.

"I know, Sammy," Dean breathes, his back to Sam. "I know."

 

end.


End file.
